From CeaseFirePA (http://www.ceasefirepa.org):
34 years ago, Pennsylvania Treasurer Budd Dwyer ended his life on live television with a gun.
More than three decades have passed, and the catastrophe that ended Budd Dwyer’s life has happened tens of thousands more times. Pennsylvanians young and old have died of gun suicide because the General Assembly has diverted their attention from this dire emergency.
Ignoring the crisis of gun suicide will not erase its existence. Meaningful action will. We should all share the burden of that work together and act with urgency at https://ceasefirepa.salsalabs.org/erpointroduction/index.html.
Extreme Risk Protection Order legislation would provide family members a meaningful tool to legally intervene when a person is a harm to themselves or others. It gives the judge with credible evidence the option to temporarily remove firearms from a person in need of intervention.
Every single day, 20 veterans end their lives, and for young people, gun suicide remains an imminent threat to their future possibilities. We must take action to pass ERPO legislation, so we can save the next life and protect all of their future memories.
For every gun violence survivor, time passes in increments of painful anniversaries. For those of us touched by the horrors of gun violence, every passing moment is an excruciating reminder of the memories that will never be created with the people we’ve lost.
For most of us directly impacted by this issue, the failure to pass meaningful gun violence prevention reforms feels like a senseless impossibility. Far too many members of the Pennsylvania General Assembly have physically numbed themselves to their own history. What message is sent when 34 years after a gun suicide in the Capitol, we are still waiting for passage of one of the best modern tools to prevent gun suicide?
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